Missing Un Records On War Crimes Found

December 11, 1987|By New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — United Nations officials have located virtually all the war crimes files reported missing this week, diplomats said Wednesday.

Announcement of the discovery of the missing material was withheld until an investigation ordered by Sec. Gen. Javier Perez de Cuellar was completed. But officials said that all but a few of the files had been found and that the rest were expected to be located soon.

The New York Post reported Tuesday that 433 of the 8,100 files in the UN war crimes archives had ``mysteriously vanished`` before a reporter began examining the archives under new access rules.

The files were compiled by the UN War Crimes Commission from 1943 to 1948 and then turned over the United Nations for safekeeping. Access to the files was restricted, but the commission`s 17 former member countries and the UN agreed this year to allow the members to accept applications from researchers and journalists of their countries.

No applications from American researchers have reached the UN. Americans file their applications through the State Department.

In his report Tuesday, Dan quoted Alf Erlandsson of Sweden, the archives` director, as saying the files apparently vanished soon after they were compiled following World War II.

``We`ve had no time to determine how they disappeared,`` the Post quoted Erlandsson as saying. ``Now we`ll see if we can reconstruct what happened.``

Erlandsson said officials had learned files were missing in the summer of 1986 when they began microfilming aging records.

The archives were almost unnoticed for nearly four decades, when only governments were allowed access to them, and then only if they requested dossiers on specific individuals.

Renewed interest was sparked early last year when the files were found to include one on Kurt Waldheim, Austria`s president and a former UN secretary general. The file related to his wartime service as a German army officer in the Balkans.

War crimes allegations surfaced against Waldheim during last year`s elections.

The U.S. Justice Department`s Office of Special Investigations, which last week concluded its own examination of all the war crimes files, never raised any questions about missing material.